Carnies and B Ball in the Hood

I think I made mention of the fact Carissa and I have been playing tennis lately. Well, I have been playing and Carissa has been watching tennis balls blow by her. :) Well when we went and bought my tennis racket, she REALLY wanted to buy a basketball. Now if you know me at all, you know the only basketball in my life is when I watch it, NOT actually playing it. I tend to think when I play basketball I look like this:

Now I know I don't actually look like this, but I definitely do feel like it, minus the Lakers jersey of course. If I were wearing one of those, I promise we wouldn't be living in the bustling metropolis of Williston North Dakota. Long story short, Carissa wanted to buy a basketball, and even though we've only been married a year, I do know, that a happy wife means a happy husband, so I gave in and bought a basketball.

Next little hurdle Carissa had to overcome was actually getting me to go to the park and play. I usually tend to go to the park to let the dogs play, not me. Even though I shaved my mustache the government still won't me go within 500 feet of a playground, (that's a joke, obviously) so it's hard to get me to a playground. Well, she finally convinced me, and we decided to go play a little game of "horse." I really wanted to play "turtle" instead, because that is her favorite animal, but she insisted we play "horse," I think it was because she wanted to call me a "ho," so once again, I gave in. We actually had a lot of fun, and the dogs were loving it. Rozzi is a complete spazz and she would chase us around and actually bite our butts. I tried to get a pic of all the slobber on Carissa's butt, and if you look close on the one pic from behind you can see it. It was quite hilarious.

Carissa and I had never gone to play ball together, but I should know by now, that whenever she wants to play a sport we haven't played before, she usually whoops me. That turned out to be the case in the first game we played. I think she had an H, and I was the HORSE. So being the guy that HATES to lose, we decided to play best of three. Luckily, for my ego, and for the sake that Carissa might actually get me to go play again, I won the next two games. It was pretty fun, and the best part was it was still light out and it was 1030 at night. One of the best things about Williston is that we are in the Central Time Zone, and right on the border of Montana and the Mountain Time Zone, so it tends to be light really late. It's kind of weird going to bed at 11pm and it still being light enough to not have to turn lights on.

This past week we had the Upper Valley Missouri Fair. The company I'm working for had a booth at the fair, and so I had to be there all 4 days. Needless to say, the fair itself was lame, but the people watching was more than amazing. My friends and acquaintances know that I have the wonderful ability to tease and make a wise crack about every person that I see. It's a blessing and a curse at times, but up here it's definitely a blessing. We tend to laugh at a lot of things. One of them is this guy:

Unfortunately I didn't time the picture right, but if you look close, you can see this guys gut hanging out his shirt. It was a button down shirt, and the buttons stopped about 6 inches from the bottom of his shirt, so whenever the wind would blow, his shirt would fan open and we got to see his belly button and fat gut. It was beyond awesome. The other funny part, is I actually work with this clown, so it was usually when he was talking to his customers, which made it that much more professional and hilarious. 

On the weekend they had the dirt races. I definitely take after my dad, and we love anything that goes fast, especially if it has 4 wheels under it. He and I have gone to numerous races together, NASCAR, Bonneville Salt Flats, Rocky Mountain Raceway, Bonneville Raceway, Miller Motorsports Park, Phoenix, Laguna Seca, Sears Point, just to name a few, so when I found out they had a dirt race track up here, I was more than excited. The racing is pretty fun, because as the name suggests, it's on dirt, and when the cars get going 100+ mph, they slide and fish tail like crazy, so the driver has to feather the gas pedal, and compensate with the steering. It's how most professional racers got their start, and boy oh boy is it exciting. I completely eat it up and just love it. The racetrack up here has a few different rules than the rest of the country, they actually encourage beer drinking, and they allow you to bring in your coolers. So, as you've probably already figured out, the people watching, and the drunken morons entertained us inbetween racing. All in all, it was a great weekend.

Here's a cool pic I snapped of the cars sliding through the turns, I also took a little video. I forgot to mention, since it is dirt racing, you do need to wear safety glasses in the stands due to the dirt being flicked at you from the cars.